A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

When first suspecting a house on the north side of the tree, I moved my chair over there. Presently a vireo with disordered breast feathers flew down on a dead twig close to the ground and leaned over with a tired anxious look, and craning her neck, turned her head on one side, and bent her eyes on the ground scrutinizingly. Then she hopped down, picked up something, threw it away, picked up another piece and flew back to her perch with it, as if to make up her mind if she really wanted that. Then her mate came, raised his crown and looked down at the bit of material with a puzzled air as if wishing he knew what to say; as if he felt he ought to be able to help her decide. But he seemed helpless and could only follow her around when she was at work, singing to her betimes, and keeping off friends or enemies who came too near. When the young hatched I noticed a still more marked difference between the nervous manners of the gnats, and the repose of vireos. While the gnat flipped about distractedly, the vireo sat calmly beside her nest, an exquisite white basket hanging under the leaves in the sun, or walked carefully over the branches looking for food for the young. Some days before finding out the facts, I suspected that the wood pewee perching on the old tree had more important business there, for the way he and his mate flew back and forth to the oak top was very pointed. So again I moved my chair. To my delight the wood pewee flew up in the tree, sat down on a horizontal crotch, and went through the motions of moulding.

There were two birds, however, that simply used the tree as a resting-place, as far as I ever knew. A hummingbird perched on the tip of a twig, looking from below like a good sized bumblebee as he preened his feathers and looked off upon the world below. At the other side of the oak a pretty pink dove perched on a sunny branch that arched against the blue sky. It sat close to the branch beside the green leaves and dressed its feathers or dozed quietly in the sun. We had other visitors that the house owners did not accept so willingly. The gnatcatchers up the sand ditch whose nest had been broken up by the thief-in-the-night did not object to brown chippies, but perhaps, if this were the same pair, they had been made suspicious by their trouble. In any case, when a brown chippie lit on a limb near the nest, quite accidentally I believe, and turned to look at the pretty structure, quite innocently I feel sure, the little gnats fell on him tooth and nail, and when he hid under the leaves where they could not reach him they fluttered above the leaves, and the moment he ventured from under cover were both at him again so violently that at the first opportunity he took to his wings. There was one curious thing about this attack and expulsion; the gnats did not utter a word during the whole affair! I had never known them to be silent before when anything was going on—rarely when there wasn't.

Another morning when I rode in there was a great commotion up in the oak. A chorus of small scolding voices, and a fluttering of little wings among the branches told that something was wrong, while a large form moving deliberately about in the tree showed the intruder to be a blue jay! Aha! the gossips would wag their heads. I disapprove of gossip, but as a truthful reporter am obliged to say that I saw the blue jay pitch down into the brush with something white in his bill—perhaps a cocoon—and that thereupon a great weeping and wailing arose from the little folk up in the treetop. A big brown California chewink stood by and watched the—robbery(?), great big fellow that he was; and not once offered to take the little fellows' part. I felt indignant. Why didn't he pitch into the big bully and drive him off before he had stolen the little birds' egg—if it was an egg. A grosbeak called ick' from the treetop, but thought he'd better not meddle; and—it was a pair of wren-tits who looked out from a brush screen and then skulked off, chuckling to themselves, I dare say, that some one else was up to their tricks. It gave my faith in birds a great shock, this, together with the pillage of the gnat's nest by the thief-in-the-night. My spleen was especially turned against the brown chewink; he certainly was a good fighter, and might at least have helped to clear the neighborhood of such a suspicious character.

Where did the egg—if it was an egg—come from? The vireos and pewees and gnats were still building, I reflected thankfully, though trembling for their future; and fortunately the hangbird had young. Perhaps the jay had found a nest that I could not discover.

After that, things went on quietly for several days. The gnats got through with their building, and went off for a holiday until it should be time to begin brooding. They flitted about the branches warbling, as if having nothing special to do; dear little souls, at work as at play, always together. One of them unexpectedly found himself near me one day; but when he saw it was only I, whipped his tail and exclaimed "Oh, it's you'. I'm' not afraid."

This peace and quietness, however, did not last. The gnats' house was evidently haunted, and they did not like—blue—ghosts. One morning when I got to the oak it was all in a hubbub, and the vireo was scolding loudly at a blue jay. When the giant pitched into the brush the wren-tit chattered, and I thought perhaps the jay was teaching him how it feels to have a shoe pinch. A few moments later I was amazed to see a gnat jab at the wall till it got a bill full of material and then fly off to the brush with it! My little birds had moved! Evidently the neighborhood was too exciting for them. More than ten days of hard work—no one can tell how hard until after watching a gnatcatcher build—had been spent in vain on this nest; and if, as suspected, this was their second, how much more work did that mean? It was a marvel that the birds could get courage to start in again, especially if they had had two homes broken up already.

From my position at the big oak I could see that the gnats were carrying the frame of the old house to a small oak in the brush. The wood pewee had moved too, and to my surprise and pleasure I found it had begun its nest on a branch under the gnats, so that both families could be watched at the same time. I nearly got brushed off the saddle promenading through the stiff chaparral to find a place where the nests could be seen from the ground; but when at last successful, I too, like the rest of the old oak's floating population, moved to pastures new. Hanging my chair on the saddle, I made Billy carry it for me; then I buckled the reins around the trunk of the oak and withdrew into the brush to watch my birds. It was a cozy little nook, from which Billy could be heard stamping his feet to shake off the flies. The little crack in the chaparral was a pleasant place to sit in, protected as it was from the wind, with the sun only coming in enough to touch up the brown leaves on the ground and warm the fragrant sage, bringing out its delicious spicy aromatic smell.

The pewee did not altogether relish having us established under its vine and fig-tree. When it saw Billy under the tree it whistled, and the bit of grass it had brought for its nest went sailing down to the brush disregarded. It did not think us as bad as the blue jay, however, for it came back with a long stem of grass in its bill, and, lighting on a high branch, called pee-ree. To be sure, when it had gone to the nest and I was inconsiderate enough to turn a page in my note-book, it dashed off. But if murder will out, so will good intentions; and before long the timid bird was brooding its nest with Billy and me for spectators.

The gnat's nest here was so much lower than the other one that it was much easier to watch. The first day the birds built rapidly. One of them got his spider's web from beside the pewee's nest, when the pewee was away. He started to go for it once after the owner had returned, caught sight of him, stopped short, and much to my amusement concluded to sit down and preen his feathers! The pewee had one special bare twig of his own that he used for a perch, and when the gnat seated himself there in his neighbor's absence he looked so small that I realized what a mite of a bird he really was. He sometimes sat there and talked while his mate moulded the nest.

When the gnats got to brooding, many of the same pretty performances were repeated that had marked the first nest of all, up in the sand ditch. When the bird on the nest hopped out and called, "Come, come," its mate, who had been wandering around in the sunny green treetop, called out in sweet tones, "Good-by, good-by."